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Latino judge attacked by Donald Trump battled cartels as prosecutor

Gonzalo Curiel built a reputation as a tough, effective lawyer. Now that he’s presiding over two class-action lawsuits regarding Trump University, he’s been subject to a kind of racist invective that has stunned both legal observers and top Republicans.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Curiel, whose handling of a lawsuit filed by former students of Donald Trump has drawn him into a political spotlight, once had to live in hiding after being threatened with assassination for his work prosecuting Mexican drug cartel members. (U.S. District Court for the Southern DIstrict of California / via the New York Times)

New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, with City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, speaks at a news conference outside Trump Tower in New York, Monday, June 6, 2016. She was speaking out against comments made by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump regarding Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Trump said the U.S. District Court Judge can't be impartial in the lawsuits regarding Trump University because his parents were born in Mexico and Trump wants to build a wall along the border. (Mark Lennihan / The Associated Press)

By Star Wire Services

Mon., June 6, 2016

Since the fall of 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel has quietly presided over hundreds of cases from a spacious wood-panelled courtroom on the second floor of the federal courthouse in downtown San Diego, drawing little attention outside the tight-knit federal legal community.

It’s a building that Curiel is familiar with, from his 13-year-long tenure as a narcotics prosecutor with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego, eventually rising to chief of the unit.

There, from 1989 to 2002, he built a reputation as a tough, effective lawyer in charge of a special task force charged with dismantling the Arellano-Felix drug cartel — an assignment that earned him round-the-clock protection from the U.S. marshals service for a year while under a death threat from the cartel.

Now, Curiel finds himself facing a different kind of threat.

The bespectacled, soft-spoken judge has been the target of repeated verbal assaults on his ethnic background, competence and fairness from Donald J. Trump, the likely Republican nominee for president.

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In a campaign appearance in San Diego on May 27, the candidate went on at length about two federal lawsuits filed against him and his real-estate investing program. He said Curiel, who is presiding over those two class-action suits, was a “hater” and referred to the Indiana-born judge as a Mexican.

“They ought to look into Judge Curiel,” he said.

The attacks continued last week, with Trump telling the Wall Street Journal that Curiel’s ethnic heritage — his parents were Mexican immigrants — made him biased.

Trump also criticized Curiel’s membership in La Raza Lawyers Association, apparently confusing the professional organization with an activist group that goes by a similar name.

A centrepiece of Trump’s campaign has been his vow to build a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico and to deport immigrants here illegally. Trump contends that Curiel, given his ethnic background, has a built-in conflict of interest.

Those attacks on Curiel have stunned legal observers, who say they threaten the independence of the judiciary, and outraged those who know Curiel in his previous career as a federal prosecutor and in his work as a judge in state courts in San Diego and the federal court.

“It’s offensive,” said Gregory Vega, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego and longtime friend of Curiel. “We haven’t talked about this, because he doesn’t talk about his cases. But I’m angry.”

There has been widespread backlash against Trump’s remarks from within the Republican Party.

Former speaker Newt Gingrich called the comment “inexcusable” and the “worst mistake” Trump has made in the campaign to date. Trump retaliated Monday by saying it was it was “inappropriate” for Gingrich — who had been mentioned as a possible running mate — to criticize his comments.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he “couldn’t disagree more” with Trump, although he would not call the attacks racist. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker struggled to answer questions about Trump’s positions, at one point saying he had agreed to be interviewed just about foreign policy. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Friday that he disagreed with Trump’s comments, adding: “He clearly says and does things I don’t agree with.”

“We would all go crazy,” Gingrich said. “Every conservative would say it was wrong and it was racism. And Trump has got to, I think, move to a new level. This is no longer the primaries. He’s no longer an interesting contender. He is now the potential leader of the United States and he’s got to move his game up to the level of being a potential leader.”

On Fox News early Monday, Trump was asked to respond to Gingrich’s comment, along with those of other Republicans.

“As far as Newt is concerned, I saw Newt, I was surprised that Newt — I thought it was inappropriate what he said,” Trump said Monday morning.

San Diego lawyer Candace Carroll headed a screening committee for Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that reviewed and recommended applicants for federal judges, and which reviewed Curiel in 2011. The committee casts a wide net and interviews scores of people, she said.

“If you’re a jerk, opposing counsel will know that and tell the committee about it,” she said. “If you’re arrogant, we’ll hear arrogant over and over again. He was very highly recommended. No one could say a bad thing about him.”

Curiel is presiding over two class-action lawsuits filed against Trump over his now-defunct Trump University real-estate seminars, for which some people paid up to $35,000 (U.S.).

The suits maintain the seminars were taught by unqualified instructors and were designed to extract as much money from attendees as possible, urging them to max out credit cards and using high-pressure sales tactics that emphasized “upselling” attendees to get them to buy more expensive course offerings.

Trump and his legal team have said the claims are bogus, and that the vast majority of attendees were satisfied with the seminars.

Curiel is the third judge who has presided over the 2010 suit. He inherited it in early 2013, just a few months after he was sworn in to the federal bench.

At that time, the court record shows, Trump didn’t object to Curiel being assigned and didn’t ask him to recuse himself, a rare move in federal courts but not unheard of. In fact, a review of the nearly 700 docket entries lodged so far in both cases show no formal motion that questioned his impartiality or fairness.

Trump nonetheless has been critical on the campaign trail and has said the case should have been thrown out long ago. Trump University hasn’t accepted any new students since 2010, but last week — in the wake of Curiel unsealing hundreds of pages of records, many of which paint an unflattering picture of the business and how it was run — Trump said he would reopen it after he wins the suit.

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